Advertised execution speed versus what you can measure

[Amanhasnoname]

"Average execution under 30 ms" sounds good until somebody asks where the stopwatch started and stopped. Often it is measured inside the data centre, from the order hitting the trading server to the fill message leaving it. That is a real number, but it skips everything on the trader's side of the wire: the route from the machine, the platform, the gateway.

What matters for a scalper is the round trip: order send, to fill confirmation visible in the terminal. Anyone can measure it with a script that stamps local time just before the send call and again when the deal appears. Do it 200 times and look at the median, but pay more attention to the worst few percent. A median of 80 ms with a tail at 600 ms hurts more than a flat 150 ms, because the tail is where slippage hides.

Things that change the result a lot: time of day, distance to the broker's server, and order size. Run the test in quiet hours and again at a busy open, then compare.

Do not compare numbers from a home connection with numbers from somewhere else and conclude the broker changed. Change one variable at a time.

Could anyone post the median and worst-case round trip from their own tests, plus how far the terminal sits from the server?